Author: Labonita Ghosh
Publication: India Today
Date: August 26, 2002
Introduction: The state police face
flak as allegations of their excesses continue to spiral
It was almost the second Black Hole
tragedy. On August 1 in Malda, the police rounded up 242 men and crammed
them into a 20 ft by 3 ft lock-up to await court hearings. By evening,
two undertrials had died of suffocation and several others lay unconscious.
Most of them had been detained for minor offences, like drinking or gambling.
Before the public outcry subsided
a similar incident occurred at the Alipore Sub-divisional Judicial Magistrate
court in Kolkata when two groups broke into a fight over drinking water
in a stifling lock-up. Fortunately, half of them clawed their way out and
were shifted to an adjacent cell.
As the abysmal condition of the
police lock-ups stand exposed, the law keepers seem to have suddenly become
law breakers. Incidences of custodial deaths, torture and rape by the West
Bengal Police are growing by the day. In July, in a Kafkaesque sequence,
the Kolkata Police picked up college lecturer Kaushik Ganguly and his friends,
Abhijit Sinha and Tinku Ghosh, for suspected collusion with Naxalite groups.
They were allegedly tortured in custody; Sinha committed suicide a few
days after his release.
The Supreme Court too came down
heavily on the police recently when the Criminal Investigation Department
failed to produce crucial documents in the Bapi Biswas custody death case
of 1997. Incredibly, the officials pleaded that the papers had been eaten
up by white ants. One of the judges wryly remarked that "special white
ants" might have been manufactured for the purpose.
Last year, Amnesty International
berated Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's "support for the police
against allegations of human rights violations". The Government, many feel,
is determined to snuff out dissent. Bhattacharya's espousal of the Prevention
of Organised Crime Act hasn't helped this image. The police enjoy unchallenged
power under Left rule, adds Trinamool Congress MLA Arunava Ghosh.
Cramped cells that lack proper toilets
and fans flout stipulations requiring custody facilities to measure about
35 sq ft per inmate. At the Kolkata Police headquarters in Lalbazar, undertrials
are not given clothes for fear they may use them to hang themselves. "But
you can get anything if you have money," says a former inmate. At Alipore,
detainees often pay up to Rs 40 for a bottle of water. "Those who are to
be produced in court within 24 hours never get food," claims lawyer Tapas
Chakraborty.
DGP Dinesh Vajpai claims over 15,000
policemen are given disciplinary punishment every year. Yet police atrocities
continue. Who will protect the people of Bengal?
